Nation: The First Baker Witness

Into the Senate committee hearing room came a wan blonde. Her hair was done up in a sort of beehive style. Her name was Gertrude Novak, and she was a $7,385-a-year clerk of the Senate Small Business Committee. Appearing last week before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration as the first public-hearing witness on the affairs of Bobby Baker, former secretary to the Democratic Senate Majority, she told a story of stock ventures and mortgages that would have baffled brighter-looking blondes.

She recalled how her husband had given Baker $12,000 in February 1960 to buy 3,600 shares of stock in Milwaukee's...

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